#dhrdump

“It was a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Malfoy.” She smiles at him, extending her right hand in front of him, offering respect.

Her smile had been the same as it had been when Draco saw her within the Hogwarts walls—most especially in the confines of the library, her safe haven, where he’d spent most of his time... observing her.

Her, and the way her curls fly softly in disarray as the books hover within her space; her, and the way her amber eyes swiftly move from left to right between the pages as her fingers curl around the quill she’d bought a week before; her, and her upturned lip as she writes the last sentence of her essay, marking the end of her library session.

Her, and the way her cheeks flush at the sight of him meeting her gaze. The glint of curiosity in her eyes vanish as fast as her smile when she realizes it. And she glares at him as she had always been.

Oh, how he wished he could see that glare back. How he wished he can see any hint of recognition from this woman in front of him. How he wished to bring it all back.

As he meets her hand with his, he feels a slight sting. He realizes his hand was cold, and hers was warmer. Her eyes still do not leave his, and he is petrified by the way her amber eyes look up close.

Glazed, clouded.

Obliviated.

Before the question can shoot out of his mouth, Hermione Granger pulls her hand away, still smiling. If she had recognized him, she would not be smiling like that to him.

She turns away, but his hand catches her wrist, and he freezes more than she does. He doesn’t need to scare her right now, so what was he doing?

“Yes?”

Her gaze takes him back to the night before he brought the Death Eaters to Hogwarts. It takes him back to the night of the Final Battle. It takes him back to the day of his trial. He wonders if he had only dreamt it, but her gazes always bring him a certain level of comfort.

And when he had found out about her circumstance a month ago—being obliviated to live as a Muggle—he had known it was not her decision. Hermione Granger was always magic. It did not make sense to him that she would leave the world she had risked her life to save.

He hopes his voice doesn’t crack as he says, “Nothing, Ms. Granger.”

Then, he pulls his hand away, the warmth from his cold palms leaving as sudden as the sting he’d felt earlier.

“See you tomorrow, Mr. Malfoy.” She pulls her hand to her chest.

And as she turns away from him for the second time, Draco doesn’t hold her back as she runs towards the other side of the street. He wonders if he can get her back to their world. He wonders if his actions had scared her.

But he also wonders if she had felt his magic hovering just on his fingertips. And he wonders if that was why she had rubbed her wrists like she was stung.

Draco was never one for affection. He never showed any emotion—be it sadness, excitement, nervousness, or fear—but when he saw Hermione Granger dragged towards the dungeons of the Manor, he couldn’t help but give off a slight twitch of a brow, a drop of sweat trickle behind his ear.

He waited until the people—no, they weren’t people—the monsters dwelling inside the walls of his childhood home went to the hall where the Dark Lord had settled himself, tainting it, as if he were Lord of the Manor.

Draco despised that his home had been invaded. Sure, he was never a good person, but he knew now that he would rather be dead than take orders from someone who would kill an entire wizarding population with no regard.

He was still a boy. He hated the war. He hated being branded.

Once the Death Eaters told Draco that it was his turn to man the dungeons, he didn’t hesitate to slip through and look for Granger's cell.

He knew his way around even with dim lighting—this was his solace before fourth year started, when he heard that a Dark Lord was on the rise.

Then he heard her—Granger—whimpering. In pain.

He rushed towards her cell.

“Granger.”

She didn’t move at the corner spot near the gates of the dungeon cell. The light coming from the moon slipped through the small cracks of the brick walls, reflecting against her curls. It looked messier and wilder, not that he had taken notice of it before.

“Here,” Draco prompted, conjuring a glass of water, levitating it in front of her.

Her head lifted slightly. He could see the browns in her eyes—pale, ghostly, dead.

“What are you doing here?” Her voice was hoarse from all her screaming earlier but snapped through him like it was ready to slice him. The glass he conjured was ignored.

Draco didn’t respond immediately, but he knew that in order for her to trust him, he would need to answer her.

 “I wanted to check if you were okay.”

“Why do you care?” She spat.

"Because I never wanted someone I know to—" he hesitated a bit before he continued, “to be treated like this.”

His chest tightened.

“I don’t want anybody else to die. Not even you.”

He never felt more truthful as he realized he was now staring at her glassy brown eyes, dark and welling with tears. He hadn’t noticed her lifting her head until he had told her the truth at the tip of his tongue. It was like being washed over with Veritaserum.

He wanted to get her out, but he never knew how to undo the locks—his father never taught him and summoning a house-elf would not only bring himself in danger, but Granger and the house-elf as well.

The gears inside his head turned, trying to think of how he could be of help to her.

He realized he didn’t want to leave her.

“Malfoy...” She called to him, the rasp in her voice didn't seem harsh anymore.

Draco moved closer to her from outside her cell. He could smell a tinge of copper and a slight shock of dark magic surrounding her.

Of all the unbelievable things he had heard in his life, her next words were one of the most.

“Can I hold your hand?”

She didn’t look at him when she said it, but Draco could feel the heat emanating from her.

And of all the unbelievable things that he had done, he figured his next action was probably the most, as he slipped his hand through the rusted metal bars and held her hand.

It felt as cold as the concrete floor as he touched it.

She gripped his, but not too tight.

He stroked the back of her hand with his thumb. She was headstrong and brave, and probably had too much on her hands—but he never thought that her hand could be soft.

Maybe it was because of his hand stroking hers, but her hand didn’t feel as cold as before. The warmness was probably the only indication he had that she was real. That she was still alive.

His trance broke when she spoke again, and he stopped his thumb from moving.

“Thank you,” she whispered and sniffed through the last of her tears.

“Rest, Granger,” he said, and he saw her head leaning on to the bars, and her eyes closed, her breathing evened.

“I'll get you out of here.” He promised her as he leaned on to the bars from outside.

Draco was never a good person to begin with and was never one to show any emotion. Comforting was never his strong suit either—it was one of the things he wasn't good at.

“Granger—”

“No, Draco!” She shoved him to the door frame, tears streaming from her eyes. What would it take for him to wipe them all from her face and stop them from falling when he’s near?

When they see each other, there were always tears.

When he stood back and leaned on to the door in surrender, she wiped her tears, but it seemed that they don’t intend to stop.

“You can't do that to me.”

He looked up, her face becoming a bit more distant as she stepped back towards the hall.

“You can't stop me. You don't have the right.”

“I need you to be safe!”

“As much as I need you to be safe, Draco! Because between the both of us, we both know who has the best chance of getting killed!” Her anger seethed from her, piercing through his gut like a spear.

But she was right—she was always right. He lost his wand, he lost his friends, he lost everything he once held so dear.

“Your best chance at being alive is right here, Draco. Believe me.” She pleaded as if losing him would lose her lifeline.

He went silent, boring her eyes into her was definitely not the best thing to do. Because he always hated it when his heart clenched at the sight of Hermione in tears.

She always had this hero complex, much like her dolt best friends, always wanting to save those in need.

But the only one Draco needed was right in front of him.

“I'll be back,” she whispered, the words flew from her lips to his ears in a caress.

And without another word, she Disapparated from Grimmauld Place.

The first time Draco asked Hermione to marry him, he was drunk. He felt like an arse, coming on to her like they were dating, when they weren’t.

He figured that they were already friends, so maybe she’d just dismiss the drunken moment.

And he knew that he’ll forget about this embarrassment by tomorrow.

But he was more surprised with her answer more than anything.

“Ask me again when you’re not drunk, Draco.”

He could hear her voice still, as his body went limp and relaxed on his bed.

The next morning, his head thumped like crazy, but her words were still ringing in his ear. So much for forgetting that embarrassment, he thought. He covered his face with the palms of his hands, as the image of her smile burned at the back of his eyelids.

The second time the question was asked, Hermione was drunk.

“When are you going to ask me again, Draco?” her words slurred against her tongue as Draco helped her get up to her apartment. They couldn’t Apparate when she had been drinking like she’d been through a break up.

Well, she actually went through a breakup with Weasley. Draco tried biting his tongue to avoid a wrong answer.

As Hermione climbed into her bed, Draco sat right beside her.

Hermione startled him when she cupped his cheek, stroking it gently—an intimate move, one Draco would end up with weak knees.

And then she smiled, drunkenly, as his eyes swam on the glazed ambers with a light glint from the moon that shone from behind her window.

And in a whisper, he answered her, “When the time is right, Hermione. When the time is right,” as he stroked the velvet box hidden inside his pocket. He thought he was ready, but she didn’t need to know that.

Hermione’s breathing evened at that.

But the right time never came, and everything else was forgotten.

Hermione went back to Weasley when he proposed to her just two weeks after their breakup.

Draco was too late.

He realized that he never really had her. Even though they were friends, he had never really courted her. They were just traipsing around their feelings for each other—at least for him.

Hermione never gave him any hints. She never told him how she felt.

‘But what about everything they had together?’

Draco could only clench his fist.

When the invitation came three months later, another envelope came with it. When Draco saw the handwriting in front, he never opened anything faster.

It read:

‘The first time you asked me to marry you, I thought you went barmy. But never in my life have I been asked by a drunk person whose eyes never left mine during the entire drinking session, and I told myself that if you’ll remember, then maybe I’ll consider.

So, I told you to ask me again.

Then the next time was when I was drunk, and it would have been the right time because by then, I would have been honest—emotional, yes, but honest. And I would have said yes if you have asked.

But now...’

He flipped the parchment, but nothing else was written. What happened? Was that it?

Then, he heard a knock on his door as if on cue. He opened it to find Hermione with her curls crowning her head as he had always loved and her eyes gazing into his as if to hypnotize.

She could have been his bride.

“Why are you here, Hermione?”

“Ask me again.”

Draco flinched a bit, confused.

“Weren’t you going to marry Weasley?”

She sighed.

“It didn’t work out. About two days ago.”

Stunned, Draco stepped backward, and Hermione went inside his apartment like nothing happened.

“Then, the invitation—”

“—is why I came here. I’m here to take it back.”

Her cheeks were as red as the scarf she wore. Draco moved towards her, inching closer until they were only a few inches within each other's privacy.

“Ask me—”

Draco embraced her, took in the scent of aloe from her hair, and citrus from her perfume.

“I told you.” Draco pulled away, placing his hands softly on her cheeks. “I told you I’ll ask you again at the right time.”

“Then, when is the right time, Draco?” The ambers in her eyes swam into his.

“You'll see,” he whispered as he closed the gap between their lips.

The last time Draco asked for her hand in marriage was the day they also got married. He planned everything with his mother and Ginevra—from the ceremony to the ornaments to the venue to the subtle things Hermione wanted.

And when Draco asked her, she never got him to finish. She kissed him and kissed him and kissed him, and he just smiled against her lips.

He considered himself lucky.

“Do you ever think of the future often?” Draco asks her as she plays with his hair under the shade of an orange tree one summer afternoon.

“Sometimes.” She lies, and if Draco knows it, he doesn’t show it, or he doesn’t tell her. “You?”

He hums, opening his eyes to her, as if he was examining her reaction to his question. She gets that look quite often—the one where she needs to give way to his feelings, to his dreams.

Sometimes, Hermione doesn’t know what to do about it.

“I think I’d like to be in a different country in a few years.” He says it while looking past her—the shadows of the leaves painting his pale skin and its rustles make a quiet accompaniment to the beating of her frantic heart.

She feels her eyes prick a bit at the corners and she looks away from him, tries to stop herself from sniffing, or else he’d think that she’s crying.

She might as well have.

So, she bites her lip when the wind whistles, and tells him, “I know,” with a smile that she forces to reach her eyes.

Her throat tightens and her chest clenches as her heart continues to thump. She thinks of his dreams, his ambitions, his wants.

And she knows them because he talks about them quite often—a writer, a wandering painter, a landscape artist; just wanting to travel around the world and see new and interesting things that he couldn’t have seen in this country he’d lived for twenty years; the beautiful sceneries he’d often show to her; the different kinds of people he’d want to meet.

She smiles inwardly. She smiles as if she understands.

And she does understand.

He’s her best friend. That’s what she is to him, as well.

For a decade, they’ve been friends.

For a decade, she had loved him.

She had never thought that they’d ever be apart.

“I’d never thought we’d be apart, though.” He says the words as if he’d plucked them from her thoughts. She looks down at him finally, and his grey eyes are pale on hers.

“Me too.” The wind takes away her soft voice.

“Maybe… this is going to be the reason we’d ‘break up.’” She only hopes she can hear the sadness in his voice.

“Maybe…” she repeats as she sighs, leaning her back to the bark of the tree, her fingers still on his hair.

She hopes he’d be sad to be away from her. She hopes in her heart that he’d think of her.

She hopes that he’d miss her too.

But she hopes as well that when the time comes that he’ll leave, he’ll remember her and take her with him.

It had been raining, and Hermione doesn’t complain. It’s the perfect atmosphere to finish her long overdue fantasy romance novel she had borrowed from her local Muggle library and hot chocolate with marshmallows floating on top of it.

She can have tea, but this was the kind of atmosphere that calls for something a bit sweeter. Thankfully, the library allows drinks inside.

She had been used to being alone at times like this, and she likes it that way.

The quiet helps her focus, the calm helps her attention to center towards the task at hand.

The page turning, the smell of parchment, the friction between pens and paper, the constant rain patters on the roof—all of it brings her comfort.

Until she meets a certain blond-haired wizard at the other end of the table she had been occupying, with about two stacks of books on each side.

At a local Muggle library in her own neighbourhood.

“Malfoy?” Hermione's surprise gets the better of her, almost forgetting that she was in a library. She hears a shush from a distance and mutters an apology to the librarian.

He shifts and looks up at her blandly, eyebrow raising, without a single word.

“What are you doing here?” She asks.

“Why do you care?” He clips back, facing down to the book he was currently holding.

“This is a Muggle library,” she hisses.

“And again, why do you care?”

It's the first time Hermione didn’t have anything to say back.

She just needs to capture Malfoy’s attention somehow.

But before she can stop it, she suddenly calls out, “That’s against the rules, you know?”

She smirks as he looks up at her again.

“What rule?”

“You can only take three books to the table at a time.”

“And what, you're an exception to the rule?”

Her cheeks heat up as she glances at the five books in front of her.

When Hermione glares back at him, he was already flipping through the pages of his book with a smirk on his face.

‘Wanker.’

Hermione rolls her eyes. She had been wasting time and she has to return her book today. So, she tries to ignore the blond for the rest of her stay.

When she finishes her book, all traces of Malfoy had been gone from the other end of the table—all but a single parchment that read, ‘Your rule is rubbish, Granger.’

She rolls her eyes again, before returning the book to the librarian and picking up another book to borrow for the next five days.

In each transaction, the librarian does a double take of her, and Hermione thinks that the lady is looking at her like she doesn't trust her returning any book on time anymore.

She apologizes again as she pays for the overdue, and the lady waves her hand dismissively, glancing at her again.

Hermione sighs and tells her that she’ll return it in three days. With that, she leaves the library, hides in a deserted shaded corner and Apparates home.

When she opens the door to her apartment, Malfoy's parchment was still flying in front of her. And she realizes that there is still some more written.

Her stomach drops as the words become coherent and she goes straight to the bathroom.

And she groans, thinking about the double takes the librarian had done. “Sodding Malfoy!”

On the parchment read, ‘Nice mole on your nose. :)’ before it captures itself into flames.

Draco wonders if he’s dreaming sometimes.

He wonders about the smell of honey every time he passes by her office at seven-thirty in the morning, the way his senses always catch them as if it were the most potent Amortentia that shouldn't have been there.

He wonders about the quiet taps of her heels, and if they really have that kind of rhythm—two on two from right to left and sometimes once more on the left—whenever she arrives at the breakroom just ten minutes after him while he lets his tea steep, and she walks just behind him to approach the stirrers and creamers.

He wonders about her quiet breath—the way she inhales sharply when he’s behind her as she reaches out for the cabinets with the refills. She never asks for anybody's help, even a quick please, and he rolls his eyes at that.

It takes her a month to slip her gaze to his while he waits for her heels to clack firmly onto the tiled-floor, waits for her sighs in resignation, and her cry for help.

And he smirks right behind her. But he doesn’t realize that his breath is as hitched as hers.

He wonders about the gold in her curls—if they had been there the entire time. He sometimes does a double take, checking if it was just the way his eyes tried to settle on the sparks of the sun’s rays at the start of the day, or an illusion, his mind playing tricks on him.

He has never found her pretty before, never even takes two minutes to take in the scent of the sweetness of her morning coffee. But now, the only indication of him staring at her is the way her lip lifts up as she walks away and his eventually cold tea.

He wonders if she already had those freckles on her cheeks. Or that little dent beside her lip when she bites the inside of her cheek. Or that little smack on her lips she does when she has that Eureka moment.

He wonders if that small smile she’d given him had been real, or if he’d just been imagining it.

Draco never talks to her, though—only nods at her in acknowledgment that they’re co-workers. He only wonders.

It’s the only thing he could do, the only thing that he thinks he deserves.

He wonders if she hadn’t been dating Weasley, if he’d asked for her time, would she have said yes.

But sometimes he knows.

Sometimes, the incredulity of Draco Malfoy’s simple words is mind-blowing, even to Hermione Granger.

“Granger, have dinner with me,” he says to her for the first time as she opens the door to her office one day—almost in a demand—coupled with the cockiness of his infamous smirk like he knows what her answer would be. Like he expects it.

And being Hermione Granger, of course she’s not going to give in. She’s known to be difficult, hard to get. And why in the world would she even give this arrogant man the time of day?

So, instead, she gives him a stare down and closes the door to his face. She smirks behind the door, but it takes only fifteen minutes for the kick in the gut to hurt.

But of course, she doesn’t let it hurt her.

It goes on for quite a while.

Days turn to weeks, and he has been there when she doesn’t expect him to be. She doesn’t count, of course. She’s not that stupid to even remember the fourth time he asked in front of her office at lunch, holding a bouquet of pink carnations with a sincere look on his face.

His blond hair shines like the moon even under the artificial lights in the Ministry. His eyes, bright grey, like he’s been searching, desperate. His lips quiver, probably in anticipation, the tremble in Draco’s voice can’t be hidden even under that light smirk.

That’s when she realized that Draco—no, Malfoy, is persistent.

But she has decided, hasn’t she? She’s not going to give in. And she’s not going to call him Draco.

“Granger.” She hears him say one day.

Her heart skips a beat whenever a taste of her last name escapes his lips.

It doesn’t sound like anything his twelve-year-old self would utter. Not like she’s ever thought about his voice, nor his lips.

Although, this time, the sound is different from all the other times.

This time feels like the last time.

Her stubbornness always wins. Hermione Granger is still not going to give in. Not to Draco Malfoy.

So, in the fifth time he asks with only himself to offer—no flowers or any other grand courting accessory—she looks straight at him and croaks an apology.

She almost doesn’t recognize her own voice as her gaze starts to fall heavy. The apology tastes bitter on her tongue, and she sometimes feels a slight sting, like a non-verbal hex, like she shouldn’t have said it.

He stares back at her with a storm in his eyes, looks down and sighs. With a lip turned up, he straightens, thanks her for her time, and walks away.